How two digital solutions are helping Denmark lift its COVID-19 lockdown – Med-Tech Innovation | Latest news for the medical device industry
The Danish Government is launching two new digital solutions to drive the safe and controlled reopening of Denmark, after the government mandated lockdown due to COVID-19.
IT services provider, Netcompany, has developed the broad national emergency applications for use by both the Danish health authorities and citizens, to support Coronavirus efforts, and will be available to the country’s public within two weeks.
COVIDmeter – monitoring the prevalence of COVID-19
COVIDmeter will collect information from citizens about disease symptoms in relation to COVID-19. The new digital solution can be used by all Danish citizens. Login is via a system usually used for online banking. The system can also inform users of up to date information on COVID-19 from the public authorities.
Users will be encouraged to fill out a digital questionnaire about their health on a weekly basis, allowing authorities to assess the development of the epidemic. Symptoms, recovering status after COVID19, and many other data is collected.
The Danish Serum Institute will use the data to monitor the spread of infection in the community. Danish citizens can now sign up for the new COVIDmeter solution at sundhed.dk.
Mobile Proximity App – helping Denmark lift its lockdown
The Bluetooth-enabled Mobile Proximity App will detect contact within 1-2 metres with others who also have the app, providing essential information to both the government and the citizen about contact patterns.
The first version of the app was developed pro bono by Netcompany and has been chosen by the Danish health authorities as the basis for a national solution.
The app, which uses Bluetooth technology will continuously scan for other discoverable devices and will notify citizens of how many contacts one has had during the day of a certain proximity and length. This is also very useful for authorities in terms of whether population is adhering to overall advice from government in terms of keeping distance after gradually opening up society. Hence the app is believed to have a positive impact on responsible behaviour. The app can also be used to help in tracing disease spread when citizens are infected by the Coronavirus.
Health authorities will only be able to use data from the app to follow up on the spread of the infection on an aggregated and pseudonymised level. Therefore, it will not be possible to trace movement patterns back to the individual person.
André Rogaczewski, Netcompany CEO and co-founder: “Whilst projection models can estimate the spread of the disease, the accuracy of these models can only be understood and validated at the point of impact. Real-time data is crucial for government to understand citizen contacts and potential infections, in order take informed decisions to manage society restrictions.
“In the coming weeks, these digital solutions will strengthen the database for the Danish health authorities’ ongoing epidemiological surveillance of the spread of infection and thus support decisions on the gradual opening of society. We are proud to be supporting the national effort to safely reopen Denmark, and would like to offer the platform to other nations planning life after lockdown.”